Hazard Tree and Tree Felling Task Group
In response to hazard tree and tree felling serious accidents that seem to occur annually, the NWCG Safety and Health Working Team has chartered a Hazard Tree and Tree Felling Task Group (HTTF). This task group is responsible for reviewing and recommending revisions to NWCG training curriculum and publications regarding hazard trees and tree felling and to develop comprehensive interagency training and reference materials. The HTTF website is expected to be completed by the end of January 2008 and will contain updated reference materials that will aid in mitigating the hazards associated with hazard trees and tree felling.

6 Minutes for Safety
This is an interagency safety initiative that, on a daily basis, addresses high risk situations that historically get firefighters in trouble. The Federal Fire and Aviation Safety Team (FFAST) encourages every fire program to become involved in Six Minutes for Safety. The safety discussions included in Six Minutes for Safety are reviewed annually and revised as better information becomes available.

Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program
In January 2002, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) chartered the Leadership Committee to establish a process for developing leadership skills throughout a firefighter's career. The Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program is the result of that initiative. The intent of this website is to support the program by:

-Providing the definitive reference for leadership values and principles in wildland fire service.
-Providing current information regarding the status of the six courses in the formal leadership curriculum.
-Providing a resource for leadership development tools, references, and training materials that can be directly accessed by all field users.

Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) is an interagency resource center. The Center’s goal is to help the entire wildland fire community become a “learning organization.” Becoming and sustaining the level of a learning organization inherently includes working safer, smarter and continuously improving. The LLC is helping the wildland fire community become skilled at continuously creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring and retaining knowledge and at purposefully modifying their behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Incident Reviews
The Incident Reviews site provides several ways to search a special collection database to find historical documents from wildland fire incidents (serious accidents, near misses, learning opportunities). The available documents include many types of reports: serious accident final factual accident investigations, escaped prescribed fire reviews, peer reviews, accident prevention analyses (APA), facilitated learning analyses ( FLA), multiple incident trend analyses and more. Often a single incident will have several reports, maps and images listed in its “Details” section.

Job Hazard Analysis
The Federal Fire and Aviation Safety Team (FFAST) and Region 1 of the U.S.D.A. Forest Service worked cooperatively to develop a web based library for wildland fire related Job Hazard Analyses (JHA's). Numerous JHA's are posted on the site as well as instructions on how to prepare a JHA. Keep in mind that OSHA regulations require that JHA's be time and location specific so the JHA's on the website would serve as templates for units to prepare their own.

Hazard Tree website (Region 1, US Forest Service)
The Hazard Tree website is a growing resource library providing a variety of reference and training information. Digitized reports, brochures, and training materials may be downloaded from the site. Links and addresses are provided for lots more.

The centerpiece for this initiative is "Hazard Trees- an Interactive Study" (Reference # 18 on the web page). This 45 minute Powerpoint slide program guides groups or individuals through a discussion; participants learn to identify indicators of tree structural issues while they decide between three risk levels. Forest health issues, including fire damage, present increased risks each year. Fatalities and serious injuries due to tree hazards continue to plague firefighters and other forest users.

New for 2006 and 2007 is a falling limb exercise. To demonstrate how quickly a limb or tree top will fall, a sawyer pretends to saw down a flag pole with a chainless saw. When a soft dummy limb is released, the timing and communication realities are revealed. The essay details the procedure, and the link takes you to a three minute video of the exercise.

Link to Sim Limb: www.fs.fed.us/fire/safety/council/newsletters/may06/may06

Fire Danger Pocket Cards
The Fire Danger PocketCard is a method of communicating information on fire danger to firefighters. The objective is to lead to greater awareness of fire danger and subsequently increased firefighter safety. The PocketCard provides a description of seasonal changes in fire danger in a local area. It is, therefore, useful to both local and out-of-area firefighters.

The PocketCard has a very important day-to-day "pre-suppression" use. When the morning and afternoon weather is read each day, the actual and predicted indices are announced. The firefighters can reference their card and see just where they are in range of possible values for danger-rating. This important information should be discussed at morning crew meetings, as well as tail gate safety meetings.

Most importantly, the card provides a method for everyone involved with wildland and prescribed fire operations to communicate a common understanding of key index values provided by the National Fire Danger Rating System.

Wildland Fire Radio Communications Website
This website is a resource for firefighters that provides details about all radios, including aviation and mobile radios, that might be found on a wildland fire. It contains training materials (including recently developed narrowband radio training), programming information, links to related sites and general communication information that is useful to all firefighters, whether in training or in the field.

FireFit Program
The FireFit Program is created with the intent to provide the interagency wildland fire community with a comprehensive, easy-to-follow, fitness program with the ultimate goal of improving firefighter safety and health and reducing injuries. This voluntary program provides a basic format for a well balanced fitness program that can be augmented as local units see fit. Program success will rely on management support at every level as well as individual’s motivation and participation.

Wildland Fire Community Center
The Wildland Fire Community Center is a rapidly developing part of the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center. It has been created to support informal “communities of practice” and formal teams involved in all aspects of fire management. This online community center connects firefighters across agency and geographic boundaries with other professionals in their field – their community. They form groups that share learning opportunities, discuss issues and concerns, and exchange knowledge using this support system. Teams also find the same “virtual work space tools” support their efforts to work across agencies and distances that isolate them.